Indonesian court disbands IS-linked group

Jemaah Ansharut Daulah members (Source: Reuters) Hanoi (VNA) – A court in Indonesia on July 31 disbanded Jemaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD), the country’s largest Islamic State-linked group, for “conducting terrorism” and affiliating itself with a militant organisation. Judge Aris Bawono Langgeng delivered the verdict in the heavily guarded South Jakarta District Court in the capital of Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority country. JAD, a loose grouping of Islamic State sympathisers, has thousands of followers in Indonesia. Its leader, Aman Abdurrahman was sentenced to death by the same court last month for inspiring bomb attacks in central Jakarta in January 2016 in which eight people died, including four attackers, as well as four other attacks in the country. The sentencing of Aman and the indictment of JAD follow suicide bombings in May at churches in Surabaya, a major city on the island of Java. In one of the incidents, a family of six, including four children, killed 14 other people. That and other bombings in mid-May were the first terrorist attacks in Indonesia that involved children among the suicide bombers. Since then, more than 270 suspected terrorists have been arrested across the main islands of Java and Sumatra, most of them with links to JAD. They also include some suspected of direct links to the Surabaya church bombings.-VNA